A guess could be that it is just one group of those surrounding the very expensive machine. "Operators" would be different than "Users".

"I struggle to think of other industries that refer to their customers as "Users" - tell that to a drug dealer. :-)

@Geo - I knew more than a few people who got 'addicted' to computers, mainly as kernel hackers...

@who says it's a specific role? And why is the focus/need to extend the customer role past it's usefulness? I mean, after leaving the shop, the owner is no longer an actual customer, but a past one. He outlived/finished that role.

@Raffzahn As of this moment, one of the two most up-voted answers.

@BrianH Which one? Neither seams to mark 'user' as a specific role - distinguishing works as well with an unspecific term covering 'everything else'. (BTW: it would help if you add your location to your profile as one could get an idea what kind of English you're entrenched).

Console "users" do tend to be called "players" or more recently "gamers", so I think having a domain-specific customer name at least has precedent, if it isn't totally common.

As an aside, one thing I disliked, especially seen in the pre-personal computing era, was seeing manuals written in the third person, like “the compiler allows the user to build a program”. Many were written like internal documents to others in the company of the publisher and “the user”, who was the ultimate consumer of the document, was just a bystander.

collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/user

I seem to be missing something here. The word "user" has existed for 600 years or more in English. Someone is called a "user" because they "use" something. What more is there to ask about? "User" does not mean the same as "owner", "operator", "customer, "etc. in standard English.

I prefer the term luser.

Isn't the commercial term for Facebook users, Facebook "products" or "content", rather than "customers"?

Even CD players and VCRs might call title their instruction booklets “User Guide”

I was going to post another question, about which system was the first to use the term "user mode" for the least privileged processor execution mode, but I think the answer is one of the usual ones: "the SDS 940 Timesharing System".

I guess when computers came up (in academia), the users themselves wanted to be distinct from the computer-ignorant customers who paid the bills.

I was watching the 1982 film Tron last night: it makes frequent reference to the users (as distinct from the programs written by the users).

As far as other industries using special language for this concept, people who go to the doctor are not "customers" either, they are "patients".

Computers (at least what most people think of when they hear the word) usually involve constant human-interaction when operated. CDs and VCRs are more passive, you turn them on, put in the media, hit Play, and then just listen/watch for a while. i.e. You spend far more of your time with a computer using it, not just listening to or watching it. Ergo, you are a "user".

Why were they called Users? As far as I know, they still are.

This is nothing to do with computing. Consider a traveller on a railway, seeking help… "customers need to understand" or "we apologize to our customers" necessarily deny you the courtesy of the only one thing the railway knows about you: you are a passenger, a traveller or some such… In a bicycle shop, is any "customer" likely to be anything but a "cyclist" or a cyclist's mum? Using generic when it should be obvious who you're talking to is always insulting, even if the poor User doesn't notice. What's the obvious specific for people with computers? "Buyer" or "owner" or "user"?

Not sure if I first heard "user" in the Amiga, Unix, MSDOS, or Windows world. Definitely not the 8-bit world of TRS-80, Apple II, or Spectrum, and it doesn't sound like the kind of word the Macintosh world would use. My guess is Windows. (In my case)

@mannaggia Use of the passive voice probably came from academic writing; it's slightly less common than it was, but is still the default style for papers in many disciplines. In broader technical writing it's still widely used.